Inspired by
Charles Kline. (It seems to me that this could be used by folks
on all sides of various issues, as easily by people I disagree with
as by reasonable people ... folks who agree with me.
Hence "all-purpose". Or does surrealism itself have an inherent
political implication?)

There exist search engines for melodies; you enter, by various means, a
bit of music, and the search engine tries to find a known tune that contains
that phrase. This came up in conversation sometime in the last couple of
weekends, and I don't remember whom I was talking to that seemed surprised
and/or skeptical that such a thing exists; so, in the hope that it was
someone who reads this, and also with the idea that there are some folks
here who missed it the last time folks were saying "oh cool, lookit this"
or had simply forgotten about it since then (or forgotten the location
anyhow) ... I figured it was time to mention such things again. It's
pretty cool, though I expect that ten years from now we'll have better
tools and a more complete index and this will look clunky in comparison.

Musipedia has such a search
engine, and there is another (or maybe another instance of the same one?)
at Melodyhound.

Here's the thing: when I say "enter a bit of music", you have a
bunch of ways to do so:

Note that Parsons
Code only requires that you be able to give a series of "it goes
higher / it goes lower / the note is repeated" indications; you don't
need to actually know the intervals or a starting pitch or be able to
notate the rhythm.

I think Melodyhound and Musipedia only search Musipedia's
own music database, not every notation site on the web. I'm not sure
whether there exists a whole-web (or even "registered with the big-name
tune index sites" portion of the web) search engine optimized for
finding tunes based on ABC notation
JC's ABC Tune Match
seems pretty effective at searching the web for ABC files based on
titles -- it found The Armigerous Goose on my own site -- and
it looks like it's supposed to also search on tune-fragments,
but I haven't been able to make it do so), but I have noticed a bunch of
ABC applications that'll search your own locally-stored ABC archive.
If anyone knows of more general melody search tools than these,
please link to them in a comment!

But as long as I'm posting links to musical tools on the web that
I may have last mentioned long enough ago to warrant a re-mention, I'll
also point out a couple of ABC resources on the web:

If you haven't gotten around to installing any
ABC programs and
find yourself holding a chunk of ABC notation,
ABC
Convert-A-Matic is a web site that lets you paste an ABC tune into
an input box, and generates GIF and PDF sheet music for you in standard
notation, plus MIDI.

Similarly, if you don't already have a program that transposes ABC
files for you, Jens
Wollschläger's ABC Transposer transposes an ABC tune up or
down via a web interface.

(So, is it late enough in the day for those of you at work to start
whistling into your computers yet?)

It was worth closing down all my browser windows to install
the latest Javascript plugin on the bedroom Linux machine
(despite my continued vague distrust of Javascript, like Dr.
McCoy's unease about the Transporter), just to watch
this rant about Pachelbel's Canon in D (via cellio
and siderea, who both got it from ian_gunn).

By way of a link from cortejo:
"Goldihat and the Three Peers", by Maister Iago ab Adam.
"Once upon a time there were three Peers: a Birdy Peer, a Shrubby
Peer, and a Chivy Peer. One morning Shrubby Peer and Chivy Peer
awoke to find that Birdy Peer had stayed up all night preparing an
elaborate breakfast of porridge [...]" Enjoy. (May be a bit
opaque to folks not at least passingly familiar with SCA culture.)

I'm in a sort of in-between state: enough of my energy has come
back to really really want to start Getting Things Done, but am still
moving more slowly than I'd like. I'm making progress on a few bits
of my severely backlogged to-do list, less quickly than I'd like but
with a feeling of relief at making any progress for a change.

In between, I figured I'd share a couple of things for y'all's
entertainment. First, I've forgotten whom I mentioned this to at Balticon, but
several of my friends will probably enjoy it anyhow: Poul Anderson's
introduction to atomic theory (in English) without using any
non-Germanic words,
"Uncleftish Beholdings"

The underlying kinds of stuff are the *firststuffs*,
which link together in sundry ways to give rise to the rest. Formerly
we knew of ninety-two firststuffs, from waterstuff, the lightest and
barest, to ymirstuff, the heaviest. Now we have made more, such as
aegirstuff and helstuff.

The firststuffs have their being as motes called *unclefts*.
These are mightly small [...]

Second, via Elbows,
the sort of USB memory
stick that I would expect to find plugged into
number_12's computer. Though personally I'd
like the idea more if one of the computers I were going to plug it
into had a thematically related casemod.

Just in case any of you haven't already seen this since Friday,
here's a culinary link for the holiday:
Easturducken
(Easter turducken), though it's bunny-chick-egg instead of
turkey-duck-chicken, so other names have been suggested, such as
"bunpeegg". "Making Easter turducken is, fortunately, much easier
than a traditional turducken, as it abandons all that pesky protein while
fully embracing the empty carbohydrates and fat. While technically Easter
turducken is a dessert and traditional turducken a main course, they
should never be consumed in the same meal. That would be heresy."

And as an extra bonus, if you make it according to their directions
you have an excuse to use a Dremmel moto-tool for cooking.

"Voilà, the loathsome hollow bunny is transformed into
several thousand calories, as God intended. Many children wonder around
Easter how it is that bunnies lay eggs. As a side benefit, Easter
turducken illustrates clearly that this 'theory' is wrong. Obviously
bunnies lay chickens, which then lay the eggs. Mystery solved."

(Unfortunately I'm no more likely to eat Easturducken than a Thanksgiving
turducken, because Peeps are eeevil, but I enjoyed reading this
bit of culinary engineering and am having fun imagining certain friends
bouncing around on the resulting sugar-high.)

Still feeling crappy; trying to get past a pounding headache ... but
didn't want to leave this for the next time I get around to a
'link sausage'
entry, given the sorts of friends I've got (though it was published
fifteen months ago so many of you may have already seen it):
Norse
'Intelligent Design'. With author's commentary.
(Spotted in a locked entry on my friendspage.)

[I'm handing this off to the 'at' daemon, so here's hoping I
haven't screwed up the HTML somewhere... I've I have, I'll fix it after
I wake up.]

Porn
Fonts -- need I actually need to say more? (Okay, I'll say
this much: a few are readable fonts with recognizeable letters, and the
rest are more just Dingbats-like collections of small graphics -- or as
one wag referred to them, "dongbats".)

Anyone's
cell phone records available for a fee: "Dozens of online
services are selling lists of cell phone calls, raising security concerns
among law enforcement and privacy experts. Criminals can use such records
to expose a government informant who regularly calls a law enforcement
official. Suspicious spouses can see if their husband or wife is calling
a certain someone a bit too often. And employers can check whether a worker
is regularly calling a psychologist -- or a competing
company."

The Idiotarod, a
race across NYC on the 28th of this month: "The Iditarod is
the famous long-distance race in which yelping dogs tow a sled across
Alaska. Our Idiotarod is pretty much the same thing, except that instead
of dogs, it's people, instead of sleds, it's shopping carts, and instead
of Alaska it's New York City." They say they swiped the
idea from folks in San Fransisco. The cost to enter is "Dignity. Plus,
there is a $5 per person entry fee." (by way of That Mailing List)

The
Advertising Slogan Generator, a silly little CGI script,
which I spotted on a mailing list under the heading "Sloganize your
name" ... and the output of which I expect to start seeing pop up on
folks journals any minute now ... Though I found the slogan it came
up with for me unsettling: "You'll Never Put A Better Bit Of Glenn
On Your Knife."[Come to think of it, the next name I put
in also produced a result that conjured ... interesting images:
"I Can't Believe I Ate The Whole The Homespun Ceilidh Band."]
Oooh, on the same site they've got
Sheep
Poetry, very much like a pair of ideas I had a long time
ago and never got around to implementing! (I was tempted to spraypaint
words on the sides of a herd of cattle some night, and enjoy the
self-rearranging "refrigerator magnet poetry" they would produce
the next day when they woke up ... I decided that programming virtual
cows in a screensaver or something would be less likely to lead to my
arrest -- or being gored or trampled -- but I never got around to that
either.) It needs more words, and the sheep need to move, but it's a
start...

I haven't sat down to try to read this yet (I plan to, but I
think I'd do better with a copy of Larousse de Poche in my lap
than constantly flipping over to
Babelfish when I try to get through it with my rusty French), but
"Tintin en
Irak" (a new Tintin story usng recycled Tintin art and new
words) looks like it might be interesting. [Though
goodness knows there are plenty of authentic Tintin tales -- already
translated even -- that I haven't read yet, which I'd like to get my
hands on some day. And some stories I read parts of in magazines
where they were serialized and never found the ends of.]

The Episcopal Diocese of Washington reacts to NBC's television
series, The Book of Daniel, in
The Blog of Daniel.
I've only skimmed so far, but it looks a lot more interesting (not
to mention more positive) than the howls of outrage from the religious
far-right fundamentalists, (who started talking about how wrong the
show before anyone had even seen it). For folks unaware of why the
Episcopal reaction would be especially relevant: the title character
is an Episcopal priest. I've got a bunch of thoughts of my own about
the first three episodes, to write up ... well I hope to get around
to that sometime this week.

The Nation has published its
Dictionary of Republicanisms, including such
entries as: "compassionate conservatism (n): Poignant concern for
the very wealthy" and "simplify (v): To cut the taxes of
Republican donors"

I don't feel like saving this until I've got another "link sausage"
entry ready to post, so for this afternoon's entertainment I give you this link to:
King Kong v. Iron Chef Godzilla!

"Godzilla! A legend and word of fear in Tokyo Cuisine, Godzilla specialized in barebcuing things with his terrible radioactive breath. He retired during the Seventies,and a recent comeback attempt in the United States failed. Now he comes back here in Kitchen Stadium to take on King Kong. Can he do it? Does he still have what it takes? Or will the Challenger's Polynesian Raw Cuisine send him back to Monster Island? The heat will be on!"

If I've left off a source credit for a link I got from you,
please forgive me. I've been even less organized than usual
lately, and am gathering these from notes scattered across a
half dozen different machines.

First, a seasonal one: the
Car Menorah,
for a mobile holiday display. (thanks to misia
for pointing it out)

Musical Lego: a full-size, playable
harpsichord built
of Lego pieces, only having to resort to glue for the lid
and modifying pieces for the jacks. The only non-Lego parts are
the strings. Plenty of pictures, design/construction notes. Even
an MP3 so you can hear how it sounds (the mechanism is a little noisy,
but sure enough, it plays). "Originally, upon thinking
about the potentials of making a LEGO musical instrument, I had hoped
to reproduce a piano, but ditched the idea due to the enormous tension
involved (40,000 lbs.)--there's a reason why pianos have steel frames.
Its ancestor, the harpsichord, seemed more practically possible--the
key/jack workings are simple levers, the strings are plucked, it's
smaller, and it maintains less tension. Coincidentally, I was in my
Bach phase anyways." (Link via Elbows, IIRC)

The
explosion-absorbing material that the trash cans in the
Washington DC Metro system are lined with. (Also, a
short Popular Science page about it.) [Hmm. It
prabably reveals something a little disturbing about me that while
I was reading the section of the
FAQ dealing with
how much coverage in needed to protect confined spaces, I started
wondering how this stuff would interact with a third-level fireball
spell ... even though I haven't played AD&D in many
years.]

A Sense Of
Scale is a lot like "Powers of Ten", but pretty cool
in its own right. For each range, it lists the sizes of various
things then shows a visual comparison (a bar graph) illustrating
the relationships between the objects, then uses the largest of
them as the starting point for the next range. It goes from the
Planck length to the distance between us and the farthest known
quasar.

God, Allah Acquitted In [December 2004] Tsunami
Disaster: Norse God of Thunder Responsible for Devastation[ignoring for the moment the rather peculiar theology
that separates the Christian God who gave the law to Moses from the
Muslim God who gave the law to Moses -- that's like writing about "both
John Cougar and John Mellencamp", isn't it? Anhyow, it amused me despite
that]"Key witnesses [...] place Thor in the Indian Ocean on
December 26, where he was allegedly assaulting Jormungand, the Midgard
Serpent, shortly before the tidal wave struck land. The autopsy report
on the sea serpent, which has been entered into evidence by the prosecution,
indicates that the creature's length was sufficient to encircle the Earth.
[...] Outside the courtroom, Nordic prophets carried signs reading
'Ragnarok' and 'The End Is Near,' only to be ridiculed by passers-by."

One I haven't read yet, but which looks interesting and I
really do want to remember to get around to later:
Brain Changes In Mood Disorders: "This is the story
of how researchers are working to understand depression, starting from
social stresses like poverty and loss of loved ones, then working all
the way through the brain systems involved to the level of cells and
molecules and even some genes which appear to be related. [...]
Although you can find some of this story elsewhere in more detailed
terms, here you'll find the new findings 'translated' into what I hope
is pretty plain English, with a focus on their practical
implications."

And finally, something just beautiful:
stunning underwater photography by Alberich Mathews,
nudes and semi-nudes, some mermaid imagery, some really cool hair
and lighting effects, dramatic and abstract reflections, and some
fantastic poses that don't work on land. Worth the time to view the
gallery even on a dialup connection. If you only glance at a few
images, I suggest starting with
Earth Mother,
The Cruelty of Self Regard, and
No Cause to Fear the Glory. (url by way of ... Elbows, I think?)

Divine Proportions: Rational Trigonometry to Universal Geometry, by
N J Wildberger, promises to replace transcendental trig
functions with rational functions. It looks interesting,
but I retain some cautious skepticism for now. Note that he's not
suggesting that sin, cos, and tan can be replaced by rationals; he's
using "quadrance" (square of distance, thus avoiding that square root
when you use the Pythagorean theorem to calculate the distance between
points in the Cartesian plane) and "spread" (replacing angle with a
ratio between the quadrance of a hypotenuse and the quadrance of an
altitude to describe how quickly two lines diverge). While I can
understand the desire to minimize irrationals and to have functions
easy to calculate, I'm not sure this approach is actually easirer to
learn. I'll have to wait until I get my hands on a copy of the book
to decide that -- if I can get past conventional circle-trig seeming
easy to me because I learned it so long ago. The bit in the blurb
that gives me serious pause is the claim that, "It develops a complete
theory of planar Euclidean geometry over a general field without
any reliance on 'axioms'." That sounds ... suspicious to
me.

An irreverent
Career Retrospective of God (yes, from a "mocking
intelligent design" perspective). Cutely illustrated. "A gifted
child with a talent for creating 'life forms', God showed promise early
in his career by creating an array of simple yet elegant designs [...]"
The 'history' presented here does make sense of the fossil record,
but is unlikely to cheer ID proponents. I liked, "At this point
God sought out therapy, where it was suggested that he try some
self-portraiture." Need I even bother with a warning that you
shouldn't read it if such portrayals are likely to offend you?

A FAQ about
various attempts/proposals to weaken or destroy hurricanes
(found indirectly via hunterkirk) -- examines such ideas as
cooling the ocean with dry ice or an iceberg, breaking up a storm with
bombs, absorbing or prematurely precipitating a storm's moisture, etc.
A common problem is that folks proposing these ideas fail to grasp the
size of a hurricane, the area of ocean involved, and just how much energy
is involved: "a hurricane releases heat energy at a rate of 50 trillion
to 200 trillion watts. (trillion here is used in the U.S. and French sense:
a number followed by 12 zeros) This is the equivalent of a 10-megaton
nuclear bomb exploding about every 20 minutes." I found it interesting
to read about some of the same ideas we used to toss around on the school
bus a long time ago, and why they don't work.

Psychopaths may make better stock market investors according
to an article about neuroeconomics research. (Though a quick reading leaves
me with the impression that the test only applies to particular conditions,
or that psychopaths are just better at following financial experts' advice.
I'll reread it when I'm less sleepy. Thanks to lpetrazickis
for the link.))

Genesis, with help, from The New Yorker. Delightful.
"And the Lord God said, 'Let there be light,' and lo, there was light.
But then the Lord God said, 'Wait, what if I make it a sort of rosy,
sunset-at-the-beach, filtered half-light, so that everything else I
design will look younger??'" And:

"One word," said
the Lord God. "Landscaping. But I want it to look natural, as if it all
somehow just happened.""Do rain forests," suggested a primitive
tribal god, who was known only as a clicking noise. "Rain forests
here," decreed the Lord God. "And deserts there. For a spa feeling."
'Which is fresh, but let's give it glow," said Buddha. "Polished stones
and bamboo, with a soothing trickle of something."

As whomever I got this link from said, "when Little Golden
Books go bad" -- enjoy
My Little Golden Book About Zogg. From the introductory
blurb: "For the safety of our race (if any still remain) I have
translated this book in the hopes that a resistance may arise. Read
the baby powder scented Final Solution of our enemies from beyond."

I've
got my tinfoil hat on -- song and (Flash) music video.
Retro. Cute. Not ROFL funny, but a bit of a giggle and big smiles.
And cute. (Link swiped from donnad)

Pink Fluffy Bunny. BIIIIG Pink Fluffy Bunny.Two hundred foot pink fluffy bunny, on a mountain in
Italy. "It's supposed to make you feel small, like Gulliver.
You walk around it and you can't help but smile." Supposed to
stay in place until 2025. Made of wool. (How is that going to do
after many seasons?) Link swiped from chipuni.

How to build the Quintessential Sentry Gun:
"The idea of this project was to create a fully-automated sentry
gun, capable of picking out a human target and accurately tracking
and shooting him or her in the heart. Really, the idea was to find
a cool robotics project for the summer while I was working at an
advertising agency, and I'd only ever seen sentry guns in movies
(like Congo) and video games (Half-Life 1, Half-Life 2, Team Fortress
Classic). I couldn't find any record of anyone building one, even
the military, although it seems likely I just didn't look hard enough.
[...] If you're here just to see my little brother get shot
with it, scroll to the bottom." A lazy susan, some plywood, a
few servos, a camera, and a bunch of code. Oh, and a BB gun. This
was a student's summer project, and the page includes notes of a
bunch of improvements planned for the future. "There are a number
of applications for a sentry gun like this that don't involve putting
holes in people. For example, I could put a camera on top and use it
for wildlife photography. A squirt gun could be attached, and it
could be used to discipline your cat when it tries to jump on the
couch...simultaneously watering your couch."(Link via tdj.)

E-nose to sniff out hospital superbugs
(New Scientist) Faster warning of outbreaks of
antibiotic-resistant staph: "Culture tests routinely used to identify
MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) take two or three days
to complete. This hampers attempts to manage outbreaks as infected patients
remain untreated and at risk of infecting others. DNA-based tests are
being trialled that promise to reduce test times to 2 hours, but now
UK-based researchers have come up with a test using an electronic sniffer
that could cut the time further, to just 15 minutes. [...] Each e-nose is
about the size of a pair of desktop PCs and costs about £60,000.
The food industry uses similar machines to root out rotten ingredients."
I'd noticed as a child that sick people sometimes have a particular
smell I just thought of as "smelling sick" (though some of the grownups
around insisted that one can't smell that so I must have been imagining
things -- yah, I know, those grownups were silly). This quote from the
article reminded me of that: "I was operating on neck abscesses on
two different patients and noticed their infections had slightly different
smells, so I wondered if a machine could work out what the bacterial
infections were from the smell alone." (Another link snagged from
tdj.)

Rare books in the British Library, scanned for viewing
over the 'net, but be warned that these are slow to load even
over a broadband connection. Shockwave and non-Shockwave versions of
a few tomes so far, Shockwave only for the rest. "Grab a corner and
watch as you 'turn the page'" interface which I feel guilty for taking
any pleasure in (because it adds overhead without adding functionality
... but it does add something to the subjective experience, at least
at first). I was able to get the animated version to work in Safari
but not Opera under OS X; have not tried it yet on Windows or Linux.
(Link snagged from filkerdave.) And thanks to a comment by
mscongeniality I can also point out that to celebrate its first
birthday, The Oxford Dictionary
of National Biography is making access free from today through
Sunday (2005-09-23 to 2005-09-25). Requires registration.

Virtual plague infests virtual world -- an "infection"
designed to affect World of Warcraft player characters near a particular
entity when it was killed, managed to spread to other characters.
Apparently NPCs can act as carriers. (Hmm. A WoW QotD and a WoW
item here, and I've never played the game. Link swiped from
dianec42.)

Rolling a handful of weapon-related links into one item ...
List of weapons that don't exist, but should, from Uncyclopedia:
"This list attempts to describe various weapons that don't exist, but
should. To meet the criteria for inclusion on this list, a weapon must
theoretically be able to kick a minimum of twelve varieties of ass. Any
weapons that kick fewer varieties are unworthy of inclusion." Among
others, the list includes Armed monkey, Bracer graters, Chocolate-covered
black hole, Double-sided folding chair, Incendiary pants, Road rage gun,
Swordchucks, and Sharpened hampster. Related entries include
Weapons of Mass Distraction (distinct from the WMD mentioned in
the 'weapons that don't exist' entry),
Weapons that once existed but shouldn't have, and
Weapons that exist but shouldn't. And if you get distracted long
enough following links to other Uncyclopedia articles, you can find the
entry that includes the text, "Breasts have nipples, which are tiny
horns used for fighting. This why Men have nipples." (Caveat: the
site contains many tasteless and offensive bits. As far as I can tell,
the offensiveness is largely intentional. But there's a lot of funny
as well.) If the URLs with apostrophes cause trouble here, try starting
with the weapons
category page and follow links from there. After that, go look at
Turn Your Hamster Into A Fighting Machine

The Six Dumbest Ideas In Computer Security (plus six "minor
dumbs" at the end), by Marcus J. Ranum, provides useful
analysis of why each of the ideas in question is ill-advised (even if
you disagree with the conclusions, the discussion points out important
limitations is these common approaches). "Computer security is a
field that has fallen far too deeply in love with the whizzbang-of-the-week
and has forsaken common sense. Your job, as a security practitioner, is
to question - if not outright challenge - the conventional wisdom and
the status quo. After all, if the conventional wisdom was working, the
rate of systems being compromised would be going down, wouldn't it?"
Pay attention when he says, "Signs that you've got this problem are..."

Hamlet -- The Text Adventure: Remember "Adventure", or
if you're a young'un, "Zork"? Or "Leather Goddesses of Phobos"? Here's
a Shakespearean one with a web interface ... (Thanks to
badmagic for the link.)

In the biting political criticism department, and in the fashion of Magic:
The Gathering, there is now
Katrina: The Gathering, with cards representing various pundits, politicians, celebrities,
categories of citizens, etc. In addition to illustrations, descriptions, and
effects on game play, each card includes a relevant quotation (except one,
on which the image itself serves as the quotation).

Beauty In Music is a
gallery of beautiful classical musicians, describing itself
as "the ultimate guide to the hottest women in classical music" (though
there is fortunately a section for early music performers as well). Not all
the musicians listed/pictured are working as musicians full-time -- and for
some reason a few people have found
one entry startling or brain-hurting, but I found it unsurprising.
Alas, several gorgeous musicians of my acquaintence are not yet listed
there ... (A conceptually-related -- but equal-opportunity -- site is
the famous
Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists, which includes some of
my friends.)

Two more that have been going around:
The 12 Babes of
Christmas (
nominations so far,
FAQ) and The 8
Hunks of Hannukah
(nominations so
far,
discussion/acceptances), holiday cheesecake/beefcake popularity
contests, the results of which will be photos of female and male LJ
cuties displayed for the benefit of everyone's holiday cheer later this
year. Both are in the nomination phases now; voting on the nominees
who accept their nominations will happen later. (I noticed that I've been
nominated as a Christmas babe, but I also notice that text has been added
to the nomination page saying that contest is only for "the ladies" and
that "males" should be nominated in the other contest ... the phrasing
leaves the status of intergendered folks unclear[ [if I want to go into 'rules lawyer' mode], but reading between
the lines I suspect I won't be counted as lady enough. Perhaps I should
start a third contest, either gender-blind or specifically for
transgendered/intergendered/genderqueer folks?)

The Flying Spaghetti Monster
Game
(requires Flash). Touch as many people as possible with your noodly
appendage to turn them into Pastafarians while avoiding the school
administrators. (Thanks to vvalkyri for
bringing the game to my attention -- either it wasn't there
yet or I overlooked it the last time I went to the site ... or I
saw that it needed Flash, was using a machine that didn't have
that installed, and later forgot all about it.)

Maryland Gas Prices lists
highest and lowest gasoline prices in the last day or two,
searchable by area and brand, but some areas are missing (Catonsville and
Baltimore, for example, so far). Includes a form for reporting prices you've
observed, and a link to resources for other states.

"Things I've learned from British folk ballads", by Jim MacDonald,
who explains that "Nothing's more certain to give you a strong sense
of the negative consequences of immoral or imprudent behavior." He
starts with "Don't ignore warnings," and goes on from there, listing
such examples as, "Avoid situations where the obvious rhyme-word is
'maidenhead'," and, "Going to sea to avoid marrying your sweetie
is an option, but if she hangs herself after your departure (and it's
even money that she's going to) her Doleful Ghost will arrive on board
your ship and the last three stanzas of your life will purely suck."
Doleful ghosts appear frequently in these lessons. I found the list
hilarious; anniemal, who knows more of the songs than I
do, laughed herself to tears. Do not miss the pop quiz at the end!
(And there are additional lessons/advice in the comments, of course.)

Zombies attack American Idol audition, producers ask one
of the zombies to audition. The gist:"Muntean organized
the zombie horde using the online forum Craigslist. [...] Little did
the zombies know that the 'American Idol' organizers had seen the
Craigslist ad. 'We've been on 24-hour zombie watch,' said coordinating
producer Patrick Lynn. 'We thought it would be fun to have them on the
show.'" And a couple of random quotes I thought were cute: one
of the zombies said before the attack, "I don't really know what
the legal ramifications of a zombie horde are," and late in the
article we get the deadpan, "The Austin Police Department says
there is no history of zombie-related crime in the city."

"Why Coyote doesn't give commandments", by cadhla:
a list of ten commandments the trickster god might give if he were
the commandment-giving type. "IV. Adultery Is Actually Pretty Fun.
Commit It All You Like. Just Make Sure Everyone Is Cool With It, Or I
Will Not Help You Out Once the Hitting Gets Started. --- V. Thou Shalt
Not Eat Poisoned Bait. If You Do, Don't Come Whining To Me About It,
Because I Am Very Unlikely To Care. Once It Is In Your Mouth, It Is
Your Problem, Not Mine. --- [...] VIII. Thou Shalt Not Be A Martyr
[...]" Worth a read whatever your religion; wisdom as well as
humour.

McSweeney's list of Klingon Fairy Tales -- just a list
of titles; amusing, very quick read, more smile than LOL. Starts
with "Goldilocks Dies With Honor at the Hands of the Three Bears"
and ""Snow White and the Six Dwarves She Killed With Her Bare Hands
and the Seventh Dwarf She Let Get Away as a Warning to Others"

"What Is Conservatism and What Is Wrong with It?" by Philip E.
Agre starts off with the observation (which I've also heard
from fidhle), that "most of the people who call themselves
'conservatives' have little notion of what conservatism even is."
Historically, "Conservatism is the domination of society by an
aristocracy," and thus fundamentally incompatible with democracy.
Where it gets interesting is his explanation of how this definition,
rather than just being etymological trivia, is actually relevant to
current conservativism and why that's bad for most of us. Plenty of
bits in here to go "Aha!" at, or to start lively arguments over.
"Modern-day liberals often theorize that conservatives use 'social
issues' as a way to mask economic objectives, but this is almost
backward: the true goal of conservatism is to establish an aristocracy,
which is a social and psychological condition of inequality. Economic
inequality and regressive taxation, while certainly welcomed by the
aristocracy, are best understood as a means to their actual goal,
which is simply to be aristocrats." And: "Conservatism in
every place and time is founded on deception. The deceptions of
conservatism today are especially sophisticated, simply because culture
today is sufficiently democratic that the myths of earlier times will
no longer suffice." Plenty more such points. Read. Discuss.
Just try to keep the discussion below the level of fisticuffs.

And just to make sure there's something here to piss off folks
on both sides of the aisle, here's a convenient chart
explaining
How To Be A Good Democrat / How To Be A Good Republican.
Snarkiness and oversimplification abound as each is cast as the other
sees them. Some obvious bits, some that folks on one side or the other
will actually believe and not recognize as exaggeration, some that may
be accurate unless I've got the same intellectual blinders as the rest
of my species, and some that are genuinely laughworthy clever. Read
it for snark, read it for insight, read it for an excuse to get upset,
read it for a giggle ... or don't. I don't think it even really
tries to be fair, except at the level of annoying both sides, but
it does have its "well if you put that in this context ... heh"
moments. Probably funniest to third-party folks and moderates.

Compact and safe hydrogen storage -- a solid which
releases hydrogen catalytically when needed and is safe enough to
carry in your pocket (as long as you're not carrying the catalyst
in the same pocket, I presume). The sidebar of links to related
stories looks interesting as well. One quibble: they describe the
space savings compared to an equivalent quantity of hydrogen gas at
"normal pressure", but who stores a gaseous fuel at normal
pressure? I'd be more interested in a comparison to typical
tank pressures. (Yeah, I can Google that and do the math; I just
think that they're cheating a bit in the article.) Recharge the
storage solid by running ammonia into it. (Link thanks to
keith_m043.)

The $100 Laptop /
One Laptop Per Child project at MIT is "a new research
initiative to develop a $100 laptop -- a technology that could
revolutionize how we educate the world's children." They want
to be able to give children in developing nations computers that
can create mesh networks on the fly, be carried between home and
school, and use "innovative power" (the example given was wind-up).
They want to make a hundred million of them and get them into the
hands of governments willing to commit to a computer-per-child
policy, and they hope to do this by late 2006 / early 2007. (Link
thanks to yesthattom.)

The
I Can Eat Glass Project"is based on the idea that people
in a foreign country have an irresistable urge to try to say something
in the indigenous tongue. In most cases, however, the best a person can
do is 'Where is the bathroom?' a phrase that marks them as a tourist.
But, if one says 'I can eat glass, it doesn't hurt me,' you will be
viewed as an insane native, and treated with dignity and respect."
So if you ant to know how to say that in about a hundred languages,
now you know where to look it up. Including, of course, Klingon.

And finally, have a giggle at this
squirrel altercation. Yes, there is more to it than
that, and no, I don't think I can give more of a clue without spoiling
it. Just put down your drink and click.

First, a reminder: The
Homespun Ceilidh Band will be performing on Saturday, 23 July,
at the Virginia Scottish Games
in Alexandria, Virginia. We'll be performing at the Fiddle Tent
after the fiddle competition -- probably around 14:45, but we could
start any time between 14:00 and 16:00 depending on how many folks
compete in the contest, so aim to get there earlier if you want to
be sure to hear us. (A few more details in
a previous journal entry, and note from one of the comments that
if we start early enough -- as is quite likely -- you can watch
puzzledance dance afterwards.) If you've been to this
event before, two notes: a) it looks like the weather might not be
as oppressively hot as usual, and b) I understand that the fiddle
tent will be in a new location, closer to the fieldhouse, so check
where it is in case I'm right.

Second, a meme (via lillibet), which I'll leave naked
of a cut-tag because it's so very short. The instructions: "Go to
the 23rd post you made on LJ, pick the fifth sentence and reprint it."
(Yes, this is clearly a riff on the "nearest book" meme.) My result:

"Got home and called the ... uh ... mortgage broker? ... the guy
the realtor told me to call about borrowing money."

Third, a status-and-immediate-plans note: I was woken too early
yesterday by the sound of chunks of plaster from the ceiling upstairs
hitting the floor over my head; did get back to sleep for a couple
more hours, then got up to try to Be Productive and take care of
Important Things that have been on my to-do list for Too Long. I got
as far as spending a few hours desperately searching for a crucial
page of notes I need, and then the heat and my body's usual fatigue
problems sat me on my ass again. Failing to turn
lying-quietly-with-eyes-closed into actual sleep (or even
really-restful-waking-rest *sigh*) I wasn't terribly useful the
rest of the day. I did get a little bit of my LJ backlog read
(how is it that every time I get caught up, the next time I pay
attention I'm a week behind and missing posts beyond the "?skip=1000"
barrier again?) after I gave up.

I'm trying again today, to deal with urgent stuff with or without
the important notes (eek!), and I guess I really need to get past
my phone-shyness issues and try to get roofers to come out for
estimates. I'm going to try not to push myself too hard because
I want to be in decent shape to perform on Saturday. I'm going to
take a bunch of things I've been just sliding forward on my to-do
list, and push as many as I can afford to until after Pennsic,
because I've got some things that Really Must Be Done between now
and Baitcon, and then there's getting ready for Baitcon and a mere
most-of-a-week between returning from that and going to
Pennsic,
so I have to budget time for Pennsic prep.

Let's see if I can manage for the file server backup to be on the
right side of Pennsic. Urk. The long-overdue set of updates to
my web site will have
to be after Pennsic sometime. Likewise for the much less important
goals of reading the 5th Harry Potter book (I've given up on reading
the 6th in time to still be able to find all my friends'
spoiler-cut-tagged LJ entries afterwards) and seeing Sith.

So communication from me will probably be spotty for a few
days, at least. If I get caught up on the Badly Overdue Stuff and
have a few extra hours of feeling halfway decent, I'll try to get
to some of the things I've been meaning to write about here for the
past week and a half. But I'm not gonna make any promises now.

Hufu, tofu textured and flavored to resemble human flesh,
"the healthy human flesh alternative". "Society is always flirting with
the consumption of human flesh: true-crime novels, The Silence of the
Lambs film series, zombie flicks, survival epics, even sit-coms. Pop
culture loves a good cannibal. Now, thanks to Mark Nuckols, cannibalism
has finally made it to the American dinner table." The
company web site includes
recipes. (Thanks to dfn_doe for the
link.)

Look up unfamiliar idioms at
WhatDoesThatMean?: "This site is a free lexicon of English
idioms, words, and catch phrases from around the world. This is
also a 'user built' site - in addition to searching for a definition, you
can add your own. Indeed, we encourage you to do so!"

Fantasy Bedtime Hour, a local-access cable show in San Fransisco
that consists of two naked women in bed reading and discussing
the novel Lord Foul's Bane, with guest appearances by
experts who attempt to answer some of their questions about the book.
Stephen R. Donaldson, the author of the novel, likes the show. I think
I'd like to see this. (Thanks to merde for linking to
it.)

The vampire squid from hell -- really, Vampyroteuthis infernalis.
Click through to see why the discoverer named it that. Asid from the
cool/creepy appearance (and no, merely being a cephalopod is not enough
to qualify it as creepy-looking in my book) it sounds like a rather
fascinating creature: "The vampire is a phylogenetic relict and
possesses features of both octopods and decapods. In addition, it has
many features that are probably adaptations to the deep-sea environment.
Among these are the loss of the ink sac and most active chromatophores,
development of photophores and the gelatinous consistency of the
tissues." You could even say it glows (I'll leave the implied filk
to someone else to flesh out): "[...] The photophores all glow
simultaneously or they all can flash at a rate of one to three per second
or pulsate. With the arm-tip organs apparently glowing continuously, the
vampire moves the arms round rapidly exposing and hiding the photophores
which is '...very disorienting [to an observer] when trying to visually
fix the animal's position'. Often a flash of the arm tips is followed by
a rapid escape response." (Thanks to qmarq -- it's his
favourite deep-sea squid -- for the link.)

This got passed around a bit a week or two ago, but a few of you
might not have seen the
warning from Canada describing the social upheaval caused
by the legalization of same-sex marriage north of the border.
What's in store for us if we follow suit? "Since then, the social
fabric of Canada has been torn apart. Every single person in Toronto,
our largest city, is participating in a massive gay orgy. They've
already ran out of batteries, chocolate (twice) and whipped cream
(they sent the Blue Jays to Chicago to get more - you don't have to
give them back). 101% of our marriages have broken down. We have been
hit with no less then 15 Biblical plauges. I only thought there were
10 myself - but that one with chili cheese dogs is really nasty. And
Richard Simmons - who knew? Rabid moose are roaming the streets,
trying to violate people with antlers. [...]" The mainstream
media have been curiously silent regarding this distressing state
of affairs.

The Dark Side of Love (as explained by Lucifer), an unusual
interpretation of The Fall, the nature of God and of love, and of Hell.
It includes lovely quotable bits, but the one that wouldn't be a
spoiler also doesn't convey why you'll want to read it, so I'll save
the quotes for my
QotD queue
sometime after most of y'all will have already read this. I don't
agree with the theology/philosophy, but it does raise some interesting
(a bit disturbing) thoughts, makes some, "gee I never thought of it
that way" points, and is very nicely written.

Blowin' up the rap scene faster
than factorial functions,
I'm dope like PNP transistors and I'll saturate your junctions.
By the time you've rhymed one line, I've already busted ten;
You rap in exponential time and I'm big-O of log(n).

I haven't listened to
the MP3 yet. And that seems like a good lead in to this next
item ...

I'm guessing that madbodger will be pleased by news
of
ribbon-beam vacuum tubes, which may solve some problems facing
the wireless communication explosion because "A ribbon-beam vacuum
electron device requires less energy than either conventional
vacuum electron devices or the solid-state transistors that replaced
them in many applications decades ago." Vacuum tubes
(or, if you prefer, 'valves') that beat transistors for power
consumption? Gimme a little while to adjust my worldview ...
"Ribbon beam amplifiers (RBAs) are smaller, generate less heat,
require smaller backup batteries, are more electrically efficient and
cost thousands of dollars less than solid-state amplifiers. And because
they could be mounted directly on a base-station tower, less signal
decay would occur during transmission." They're predicting this
could have a major impact on the growth of next-generation wireless
networks. "[...] dramatically improving throughput and reducing the
cost of base stations by 65 percent [...] reduce the cost of delivering
voice and data from the current 50 cents per megabyte to five cents per
megabyte [...] from 1.9 GHz for third-generation U.S. wireless base
stations to 5.8 GHz for WiMAX, or wireless broadband networks [...]"
It'll be interesting to see how this works out.

A scientific analysis of the effects of orgasm on women's
brains, using modern brain-imaging technology (the
article just says "brain scans" without specifying which technique):
"You see extreme deactivation of large portions of the brain,
especially the fear centres, the brain that controls emotions."
and: "The deactivation of these very important parts of the brain
might be the most important thing necessary to have an orgasm. If you
are in a high level of anxiety it is very hard to have sex."
The scientists attempted to study men's brains the same way but were
presented with challenges because "it typically took only 20 seconds
to reach ejaculation" which made it difficult to interpret the data.
They suspect some similarities between the sexes but have already noted
some differences. [Edit at 13:45: Here are
twomore
articles about the same study (thanks to moominmolly).]

As usual, I've gone far longer than I meant to between doing
'link sausage' entries; and as usual, I've forgotten where I
found many of these. I've got a few links already collected
for the next link sausage entry, too ...

Altoids
"re-use our tins" contest (thanks to aiglet):
I almost punted this because the web site puts the descriptive
text into images without ALT tags instead of using text to
display text, dammit ... but nonetheless some of you may be
interested in their "Tin Million Uses" contest seeking "the
most innovative and curious re-use of the Altoids tin [...]
the more curious the better." Anyone managed to fit a Linux
box into an Altoids tin yet?

Why it's smart to disobey officials in emergencies, from
Wired (again thanks to aiglet): "In a connected
world, ordinary people often have access to better information than
officials do." Regarding 9/11, "According to the engineers, use
of elevators in the early phase of the evacuation, along with the
decision to not stay put, saved roughly 2,500 lives. This disobedience
had nothing to do with panic. The report documents how evacuees stopped
to help the injured and assist the mobility-impaired, even to give
emotional comfort. Not panic but what disaster experts call reasoned
flight ruled the day." And, "This is the real source of
homeland security: not authoritarian schemes of surveillance and
punishment, but multichannel networks of advice, information, and
mutual aid."

Tinfoil.com, "Dedicated
to the preservation of early recorded sounds", by which they
mostly mean wax cylinders. They've got excerpts from the world's
earliest still-playable sound recording: "Mere months after
Edison's invention of the phonograph, inventor Frank Lambert shared
Edison's vision of applying the new talking machine toward the
development of a talking clock. Realizing that soft tinfoil, which
was the recording medium of the day, would not provide a lasting
record (wax cylinders were still years away), Lambert (no relation
to Thomas Lambert, inventor of the Lambert celluloid cylinder)
apparently chose to experiment with a cylinder made of lead. As
a result, his early sound recording experiments can still be heard
today after more than 120 years."

While I (and many of my friends) continue to find
the
spoons metaphor useful for describing what chronic illness
is like, as well as using it as a shorthand for describing our
current state (some of my healthy friends have started using
it in the second way as well), tamnonlinear points
out limitations of the spoons metaphor and suggests another:
how having to cope with a chronic illness amounts to having a
second job. "Illness as a second job makes more
sense to me. It's a job that you hate and it doesn't pay you. It
takes your free time and requires your concentration, and it is an
obligation you can't put off. It takes work. It limits what you can
do, how far ahead you can plan activities, how much spare time you
can spare. Even when you aren't 'working' at the other job, you
need time to do nothing sometimes, just because you haven't been
able to do that with your other obligations. You can't always
predict how much of your time it will need or take. If the disease
or disorder gets serious enough, it becomes the full time job."
I still find the spoons metaphor useful and don't plan to give it
up, but the second-job analogy rings true as well and presents a
little more of the picture of what it's like dealing with this.
Some of the comments provide important clarifications and
amplifications. (Look for the comments by fjm and
hilleviw) I'll try not to play the "my agenda should
be your agenda" game (since I blatantly committed that act yesterday),
but if [this part of] my agenda already is your agenda, then this is
the most important link in this journal entry.

From "that mailing list" comes this striking set of images showing
a
transparent monitor effect -- desktops that give the illusion
that the icons are hovering in space and you can see right through
the monitor to whatever's on the wall behind it. (This would be a
bit trickier with a laptop that gets moved around, but wicked cool
if you could pull it off.)

The Phallic Logo Awards provides examples of, and snarky
comments on, corporate logos which resemble penes. "The game
designers across the nation are playing is; can they design a
logo and get it approved without the client realising it's a big
spurting penis?" There's even a special "muff diver award"
for a logo the judges couldn't resist even though it didn't look
phallic. (Thanks to dorable for linking to it.)
Theoretically work safe -- the images anyhow, if not the text --
since they're all supposedly-innocent logos of corporations,
organizations, and government agencies ... unless your cow-orkers
have minds as dirty as yours. ;-)

An open letter to the
Kansas School Board requesting that the author's faith be
included in classroom discussions of "Intelligent Design".
The author believes that the world was created by a Flying
Spaghetti Monster: "Let us remember that there are multiple
theories of Intelligent Design. I and many others around the
world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by
a Flying Spaghetti Monster. It was He who created all that we
see and all that we feel. We feel strongly that the overwhelming
scientific evidence pointing towards evolutionary processes is
nothing but a coincidence, put in place by Him. It is for this
reason that I'm writing you today, to formally request that this
alternative theory be taught in your schools, along with the
other two theories. In fact, I will go so far as to say, if you
do not agree to do this, we will be forced to proceed with legal
action. I'm sure you see where we are coming from. If the
Intelligent Design theory is not based on faith, but instead
another scientific theory, as is claimed, then you must also
allow our theory to be taught, as it is also based on science,
not on faith." I'm guessing that several ofmy friends will
be wooed to this faith upon learning that "it is disrespectful
to teach our beliefs without wearing His chosen outfit, which of
course is full pirate regalia." [Emphasis added for
the sake of Marine Property Redistribution Specialists who may
be only skimming this entry.] The scientific evidence that is
presented includes a graph demonstrating the correlation of
global warming with the decline in the number of active pirates.
Two members of the school board have responded so far. (Linked
to by a few people ... I think I saw it first in theferrett's
journal, but I'm not sure.) T-shirts and coffee mugs available.

I've never been married, so mine is the perspective of an
innocent bystander rather than an expert, but zoethe's
Guide to Happy Marriage sounds like it makes an awful lot of
sense.

Beware Of Camera! A collection of safety warnings from the sections
of camera owner's manuals you probably skipped past in too much of
a hurry. Go read these important safety tips so that you can take
photographs safely. Includes such gems as, "The rim of the lenshood
can cause injury. Take care not to accidentally strike anyone with the
camera when the lenshood is attached," and "Placing the camera
strap around your neck could result in strangulation."

A vehicle that
transforms from bike-like to trike-like depending on how fast it's
moving "would have wide appeal to able-bodied children and
children and adults with special needs." The idea is to provide
the stability of training wheels or a trike only when needed.
"You can get a kid up on two wheels and as long as they're
moving and they're looking where they're going, they're going to
do OK. But once they slow down and stop, they fall over, get scared
and get off. Then you have to start all over again." With this,
as it slows down it changes to trike-mode. (Thanks to
syntonic_comma for forwarding me email about it.)

The Mathematics of Love: "We were able to derive a set of
nonlinear difference equations for marital interaction as well as
physiology and perception. These equations provided parameters,
that allowed us to predict, with over 90 percent accuracy, what
was going to happen to a relationship over a three-year period."
And, "What's different about what I do, compared with most
psychologists, is that for me the relationship is the unit, rather
than the person. What I focus on is a very ephemeral thing, which
is what happens between people when they interact. It's not either
person, it's something that happens when they're together."

Media-Sensitive Glasses: "As part of her Social Defense
Mechanisms: Tools for Reclaiming our Personal Space research,
Limor Fried developed the Media-Sensitive Glasses that automatically
darken whenever a television is in view, so as to protect the wearer
from television's 'hypnotic' effect. The name of this project
originates from the fictional 'Peril-Sensitive Sunglasses' used by
one of the characters in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."

A tale worthy of Aesop, or at least a fair quantity of giggling.
Some of y'all saw this when lots of people linked to it a couple of
weeks ago; the rest of you put down your beverage and go read
this adorable tale of a cat and a snake.

The
Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries according to
a panel of judges assembled by conservative weekly Human Events.
Commentary and discussion
here (not much yet, listed in case more comments show up),
here, and
here (unsurprisingly, misia's journal is where most
of the discussion seems to be -- I don't think theferrett
has chimed in yet) that I've noticed so far on LiveJournal, and
apparently on Metafilter
as well but I haven't been able to access it today. My suggestion:
go right to
Misia's entry unless you've got a compulsion to read the
site-of-origin before seeing any commentary.

And finally, the must-read link of this pile (though the snake/cat
story is a very close second):
A wonderful story of human/canine interaction by axiomaxiom.
"We barked and jumped and leaped and panted until the husky gave the
'it's over' signal. She actually came up to me and indicated in dog-speech
that barking time was over. It was so clear, from the set of her ears and
tail. I went down into a submissive posture I'd seen on Discovery channel,
and she resumed her post. I had become a dog. I had joined their little
impromptu pack. So long as I respected the leadership of the female husky,
I was welcome. So long as I obeyed the rules, I could stay and be one of
them. They must have thought I was a dog." And: "I rejoined the
party, laughed with my friends about my sojourn with the dogs, had some
awesome lemon squares and had a good time. I was in a much better mood.
I didn't feel alone at the party any more, I felt part of something."
The reasons for wanting to share this are many -- just o read it. (Take
the time to scroll through the comments as well.)